The Chronicles Of…

Ahhh… it’s good to go to a rock concert with a real rock crowd.

I went to see Faith No More at the Hordern Pavilion (my favourite venue!) last night with James. The last time I saw them was 13 years ago at the same venue with Pete, Matt, Chris, (Spiro?) and some other 16/17 year olds.
Old.

I remember the concert in 1997 was really wild (might’ve been the first concert I crowd surfed at…?), and FNM have lost none of their rock. Neither have their fans.

It was the usual story down near the front where James and I were. Lots of guys mixed in with guys and their petite girlfriends taking up the space where you want the crowd to go crazy… I was ready for more disappointing crowd lameness… BUT! The lights went down. FNM played midnight cowboy (slow instrumental song) and built the anticipation. Then BOOM! First song, the crowd surged, the mosh pit went mental (pro. men-ull) and the girls and lady-boys came running out like squirrels from a bush fire.

It was great. No fear of treading on the precious and fragile, just free, crazy, uninhibited jumping, heading banging, and slamming! I was 17 again! Except now I’m bigger framed and 30kgs heavier, so the pit was not the intimidating “I might die here” place that I remembered.
I just let loose. It was great.

And at the end there was the nostalgic familiarity of being soaked with sweat and partially deaf. The sweat I can live with, but I do feel regret for not protecting my hearing better… I’ve come to realise that hearing is not only worth protecting just because you’ve got, but because I feel stupid when I have to ask people 3 times to repeat themselves or have my phone speaker set at 50 decibels above normal… next time.

I’d never heard of the support band “Eagles of Deathmetal” before but they put on a great show. I think they have the same drummer from Queens of the Stone Age… either way, they were much better than the Jesus Lizard who did support for the 97 show. If I remember correctly, their lead singer was wasted and he pulled out his old fella on stage…

I got up this morning at 5.40am to go for a bike ride to Bondi and back (I do this about twice a week to stop getting fat well slow down the fatness!).

I met my riding buddy at Stanmore station, and then made it as far as the Caltex servo in Enmore where I decide to put more air in my front tyre. The air compressor was broken so I decided to use my hand pump. I had to inflate the tyre to 95PSI (that’s a hell of alot of pressure!) and somewhere about 70PSI the valve on my inner tube breaks. It just broke. Pssssssfffff. Total flat tyre.

Ride over.

So basically i got up at 20 to 6 in the morning to ride my pushy to the servo in Enmore and then walk home…

Fail.

So here’s an update of some of the things that have been happening…

- There’s no internet at home, hasn’t really been for almost 2 weeks, not quite but almost
- Therefore no blogging and not much Twittering or Facebooking or anything (cause when I have the internet at home I’m awesome at keeping up with all those!!)

- I went to Melbourne not last week but the one before. Good to catch up with people, course is getting harder, still good things to learn but just a little uncomfortable at times

- We moved house 2 weekends ago, actually I flew in from Melbourne and went straight into moving day… New house is good, but has leaked a lot in this rain, not that the owners would have known cause it pretty much hasn’t ever rained like this…

- Finally got some parts in for the Jeep, starting look a little more vehicle-ish. Bushes and shackles are in and wheels/axles/diffs are back under it. Next on the list is a cross-member to support the gearbox, shocks, and preparing and painting the underside of the body and then putting that back on

- Everything to do with the computer system at work is failing, internet is very intermittent here, we’re finally changing providers, I can’t access our main computer system due to a temporary set up for the internet, we’re due to get a new server cause the old one is old and our Volkswagen systems keep dropping out and I’m forever trying to get them back up

- Family is starting to do well again, we were all sick and unsettled from the move, although Hamish is having midnight snack cravings as he doesn’t eat much during the day

Well that’s about it for now… I should go work… and hope that the internets stays up long enough for me to post this…

Does anyone know, if it’s possible to use Wordpress software to run any kind of website?
You see the thing is, I really like the way the Wordpress runs the “back-end” and I’m interested in building a website that has the same interface. Especially so I can use all the plugins that are made for it.
Ok geeks… over to you.

I got a new pushy yesterday! My old bike crapped itself after 5 years of ownership. I think i’ll get it fixed up and working again eventually, but it was too small anyway and not really suited for the riding i’m doing (you know, very similar to Le Tour kinda stuff…)

It’s a cell bikes X1 Classic. It’s nice and big with good running gear for good distance rides like to Cronulla and back once or twice a week (60kms each ride).

So look out world! This’ll help keep the fat away!

I got a bit of help with my PC recently from a friendly geek, who showed me how to fix up my machine. I backed up all of my important data (music/videos/games…oh, and uni work etc) onto a brand new external hard drive, and was all excited that I’d be able to start a fresh installation of Windows.

I did the reinstall, which seemed to have gone well, and started reinstalling software and downloading Windows updates. I needed to restart the computer, which I did, then it died. Again.

It just repeatedly mentioned missing/corrupt System32 hal dll files and just wouldn’t work, even after I had looked up ‘fixes’ from the Microsoft website and tried everything that they suggested.

Boo.

So I’m currently in the process of spitting the dummy, and seriously trying to work out how to get together the money to just go and finally buy a MacBook. I’m so sick of talking about it, and just want to go and do it. But I had also decided that this was the year that I’d be financially responsible(ish) and not waste money… so although I really, really want to go and buy one, I think I’m going to have to live with the old laptop that Dicker gave me a few years ago (which I’m using to type this up now) for doing uni work etc.

So does anyone know how I change my iPhone over to sync with this machine, and if I manage to do it, will I be able to change again later if/when I eventually buy a new computer (the shiny new MacBook that’s calling to me like a siren)?

Google, here I come…

All I want is a freebie, Is that too much to ask??

I have a laptop, I broke the screen, it only works when plugged into power (but don’t they all after a while) and I thought I would ask your help.

In today’s throwout, because cost of repair is about the same as cost of replacement, kind of world I was wondering if anyone had, or knew someone who had, an old Dell Inspiron 6000 (although the number possibly could be slightly different and still work) laptop with that may have crapped itself but the monitor is still ok on it that they’re willing to give to me?

I’m not really expecting a yes, naturally I’m hoping for one, but not expecting it.

So go forth and me one! please…

C’mon, you know you want to devote some time to this!!

Someone stole my 6 year old Gen 3 iPod out of the Nimbus this afternoon… just walked on by and took it. Didn’t take the cables, or empty the glove box or take the spare change, or the power drill or the extension lead and grinder, just the iPod.

ipod stolen!

Sure I left all the windows down and the iPod on display in the centre consul… And Pete has warned me about known offenders in the area… but I refuse to accept fault for this! Why should I blame myself when someone else breaks the law?? I didn’t steal, they did.

It’s a sad state of affairs when the innocent are blamed for the misdemeanors of others. I bet an insurance company would blame me for not locking my car or winding up the windows… but hey, reality check, I’m not the thief here…

Anyway, the battery was dead and it was old… I’m hoping for a new iPhone soon! Woot!

The most inconvenient thing is that I don’t have Pearl Jam on play 24/7 in the car now…

Avatar. Saw it last night. It drew me in. I liked it.

I didn’t have great expectations of this movie, given what I already new of the story line, but I was suprised at how much I enjoyed it. My brother reckoned it was worth the price of admission just for the visuals, and he’s probably right.

Really, my only big hang up is the name of the precious mineral which is really the catalyst behind the story… They called it “unobtainium”. This is all a little John Bunyan/Pilgrim’s Progress for my liking…

Why not just go completely obvious and call the main characters Evil Villian, Hero, and Love Interest? Dumb.

Anyway, I’d go see it at the movies if I were you. Fairly spectacular.

Well my holiday is coming to an end pretty soon, which means I was meant to have done a whole list of activities to start the year in a good way. Let’s see how I’ve done:

1. Get my car serviced / airconditioning fixed.
Took my car to the airconditioning guy this morning, who told me it would cost almost $700 to get it working again. I haven’t even come close to getting the car serviced.

2. Find out what happened with a guitar I tried to sell in 2008.
Went into the shop who were selling it for me, and they don’t have any record of it. They’re going to call me at some stage, so who knows. I know the guy who owns the business though, and he’s honest, just forgetful, so I should hear something eventually.

3. Teach Vanessa how to drive.
Not. One. Lesson. But it looks as though we may get access to a small automatic car soon, which belonged to her Nan. We’ll see.

4. Exercise every day.
Been for a few runs, done a few pushups. Nothing too spectacular. Been swimming once or twice, which was nice.

5. Read for fun.
Read a few books, which is good. Finally, I’ve achieved one of my goals…

6. Catch up on sleep.
Yep, at least I’ve done plenty of that.

7. See friends and be relaxed.
Ditto. (This is getting good, just ignore the first few).

8. Fix my computer.
Nope. Ok, I’m slowing down again.

9. Write some songs.
No, but I did play some guitar which sort of, kind of counts?

OK, that was my version of New Year’s Resolutions. How did you lot go?